Sorry....not much to look at, but they have all been great for their time!

July 9th, 2001, 10:47 PM

equinoxe3d

Well, that's my first computer and I have it only since 1999, so there's not going much in videocards:

-ATI 3D Charger 2MB PCI: Based on the Rage IIc chip, the 2D was average, but the video playback quality was stunning. It also faintly supported Direct3D: I could play WipeOut XL, Turok and RollCage at 320x240 medium or low detail at between 10 and 30 fps depending on games, but gaming was mostly done in software renderer due to the poor 3D performance and low memory. Still have it, but not used for now.

-3dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP: My first "true" 3D accelerator card, I have it only since Christmas 2000 (better late than never http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/smile.gif). 3D and 2D is obviously 10 times better than the 3D Charger, but MPEG-2 playback is slightly less impressive, but still very good. Still have it running in my lone machine...

Ho ho ho... Now I feel old. I've started with a genuine CGA card. (A whole 4 colours at the same time, in a whopping 320x200 resolution! Is that kewl, or what?)

Then I had an Oak VGA card, in ISA flavor. With a whole 256K of RAM. High res 640x480, in 16 colours. (Yes, that is 4 bit colour.) Then a Hercules monochrome card, with a genuine IBM monochrome display, in paralel with it. (Dual head at its finest http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/biggrin.gif)

Then there were a few more upgrades, going through another Oak, this time able to display a whole 800x600, in 256 colour. Slower than a slow snail that's had "Slow" cast on it, though. Then an ISA Tseng ET-4000. (Not the W32, which was a generation later.)

Then a Cirrus Logic 1 MB card, on Vesa Local Bus. Now that was quick. Then a Number 9 VLB card, based on some S3 chipset. (As big a card as the V5500, if my memory doesn't fail me.) Still no 3D stuff, but it had dual ported RAM. That was some awesome speed, for that time.

Then a Matrox Mystique in PCI. (The OLD Mystique.) Then a Matrox G200. Then a G400. Then briefly an S3 Viper 2. Then the Voodoo 5500. Briefly tried a GeForce 256, didn't like it, went back to the Voodoo 5. And now it's a Kyro 2.